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Dallas lawyer, former prosecutor Sidney Powell takes aim at Justice Department in scathing new book

WASHINGTON — Poke your head into a conversation about Wall Street, banking and the law these days, and it won’t be long before someone complains that the Justice Department and the SEC are too quick to settle, and that too few bankers and other money moguls whose conduct played a role in the 2008 financial crisis are sent to prison.

The ease with which the big banks shrug off even the biggest fines — JP Morgan Chase comes to mind, though sagging earnings suggest it has taken some lumps — has only fueled some of that discontent.

But a former Texas prosecutor turned defense lawyer and author has just published a book that aims to tell the story from the other way around, and to put the Justice Department under the microscope for what she says is a kind of fraud of its own making, misconduct that has resulted in miscarried justice.

In Licensed to Lie, Powell reviews some of the larger ethical missteps — and courtroom reversals — that have dogged some of the Justice Department’s biggest efforts to fight corporate and political wrongdoing. At the heart of the book is her review of the prosecutorial missteps that led to convictions — and later reversals — in high-profile cases brought by the government’s prestigious Public Integrity Section. That’s the team that convicted Sen. Ted Stevens on corruption charges, only to have it later revealed that their lawyers lied and the convictions tossed out. (Too late for Stevens, who lost his re-election, and soon after died in a plane crash.) Another example: The DOJ’s decision to prosecute Arthur Andersen accounting firm (rather than just its culpable partners) for its Enron-related failures. The corporation disappeared as a result, but the conduct was later deemed to not be criminal by the Supreme Court. Too late for the firm and its employees, too. (Criminal or not, the accounting firm had long since lost its ethical compass in a quest for higher consulting fees, former partners and others said after its fall.)

And when the DOJ went after executives at Merrill Lynch for alleged fraud in connection with the Enron collapse, they won their cases then too — only to see the verdicts tossed on appeal, and after prison sentences had begun.

“We Americans are extremely proud of our criminal justice system. We believe it to be the best and fairest in the world. And in many ways it is. … but the system only works if the participants follow the rules,” writes Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in the book’s introduction.

“In truth, Sidney Powell has more testosterone than pretty much any roomful of lawyers, be they men or women. Writing a book of this type more than proves it,” he writes. “Not only does she take on — by name — prosecutors and former prosecutors who continue to serve in powerful and responsible positions, she is also relentless in criticizing judges before whom she has practiced for years. Few lawyers have the stones to do this.”

The book officially comes out May 1, so you read it yourself to see if she makes her case. I caught up with her to talk about her start as a female attorney in a very male-dominated world of federal prosecutors in south Texas. She joined the appellate practice of the U.S. Attorney in San Antonio in 1978, just after graduating from North Carolina law school and passing the Texas bar.

Sidney Powell, right, was honored for charity work in 1996 in Dallas. A former president of the Fifth Circuit Bar Association, Powell is a former prosecutor who has written a book critical of the Department of Justice. File photo.

Soon after, a federal prosecutor in her office was targeted by the Bandidos motorcycle gang. “He was a tiny man, and he drove this enormous Lincoln Continental,” she said. “A white-paneled van pulled up and he recognized what was happening and had the presence of mind to slam the car into park and dive under the dash. They riddled the car, I mean shot gun, machine gun, everything. But he only had a cut.”

The two attacks initiated a frenzied period of heightened security. “We really felt it was open season on federal judges and prosecutors,” she said. “There were marshals all around and We were all wearing vests,” she said. “They took us out to show how to shoot, but my aunt had already done that for me at age five. I shot my first bullet straight through the target. They just looked at me, they didn’t know what to say.”

In 1986, she was recruited to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Dallas, where she stood up the office’s first appellate division. Later on, she was lured into private practice by Strasburger & Price, where she stayed five years before launching her own appellate practice, Sidney Powell LLC, still in Dallas.

She was in Washington today for a gala celebration tonight, when the Constitution Project honors the attorneys who defended Stevens.

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